This month marked my initiation into the Daring Bakers clan and this month’s challenge turned out to be, for me, a bit of a baptism by fire. June’s challenge was to make a Danish Braid (filled with your choice of filling) and it was hosted by Kelly of Sass & Veracity and Ben of What’s Cooking?. When I saw what the challenge was going to be for my first month I was a little scared to tell you the truth and I had to keep reminding myself that Daring Bakers is all about leaving your comfort zone and making things you wouldn’t normally make. The Danish Braid could have any filling you wanted really, but since this was my first challenge I stuck with the apple filling that came with the recipe because I was scared I’d stuff it up.

The dough itself was fairly easy to make although I don’t own a stand mixer so I just had to make it the old fashioned way with my fingers. That was alright but there were a few mishaps during the mixing with the liquid escaping and running all over the kitchen bench and me having to build little flour walls to stop it. The only complaint I have about the dough is the fact that you have to chill it for 30 minutes between each turn and for 5 hours (or overnight) after the final turn….but that’s only because I’m really impatient and I kept checking the time constantly when it was in the fridge. Spreading the beurrage onto the dough was another tricky bit as it got everywhere, especially when I was rolling it after it had been folded together for the first time. It kept bursting out of the dough, but that was ok because I just scraped it up and dumped it back on top of it again.

I put the waiting to good use though and I made the apple filling while I was waiting for the dough to chill. But then something really exciting happened and one of the houses behind my parents house (where I was making the braid) set on fire! So the braid was abandoned and me and my sister ran to watch the firemen. The place was completely gutted and there was a car on the lawn so apparently the firemen were worried there was someone in there but it was alright. Although, according to the news, there is a man missing.

Anyway, back to the baking. Once the dough had chilled for five hours it was time to get it out of the fridge and roll it out again into a big rectangle. That took a while and my arms were sore after all the kneading and rolling but that’s more to do with me being lazy and not exercising than it is to do with the dough. The dough was lovely and very well behaved. Once I’d got it into a big rectangle, I cut it into two smaller ones since I had decided to make two smaller braids - one for my parents and one for me and Michael.

Then it was time for cutting and filling the braid. This part was definitely the easiest bit of the whole thing since it was just making sure there was the same amount of strips on each side and dumping a whole lot of apple and cinnamon filling in the middle. The actual braiding was a little more difficult as I couldn’t quite keep the whole thing together and it kept unfurling whenever I turned my back. So after wrestling with it for a while I gave up and started on the second braid….which actually turned out worse since I made the cuts too long and it didn’t give a solid base for the filling but it’s alright. The first one turned out ok. The recipe was fairly easy to follow and I think I’ll be trying it again at some point.

There are heaps of sexy looking braids out there and I advise you to go check them out! Either click around on the blogroll or just try a google search. I am particularly fond of Fanny’s Danish Braid with Vanilla Custard and chocolate chips over at foodbeam. I think I might have to give that one a try next time I do this.

Recipe:

Danish Dough:

Makes 2 1/2 pounds of dough

For the dough (detrempe):

1 ounce of fresh yeast or 1 tablespoon of active dry yeast

1/2 cup of whole milk

1/3 cup of sugar

Zest of one orange, finely grated

3/4 teaspoon of ground cardamom (I left this out since I’m not really a fan of it but it’s up to you)

1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

1/2 a vanilla bean, split and scraped

2 large eggs, chilled

1/4 cup of fresh orange juice

3 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon of salt

For the butter block (Beurrage):

1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter

1/4 cup of all-purpose flour

DOUGH
Combine yeast and milk in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and mix on low speed. Slowly add sugar, orange zest, cardamom, vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, eggs, and orange juice. Mix well. Change to the dough hook and add the salt with the flour, 1 cup at a time, increasing speed to medium as the flour is incorporated. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes, or until smooth. You may need to add a little more flour if it is sticky. Transfer dough to a lightly floured baking sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Without a standing mixer: Combine yeast and milk in a bowl with a hand mixer on low speed or a whisk. Add sugar, orange zest, cardamom, vanilla extract, vanilla seeds, eggs, and orange juice and mix well. Sift flour and salt on your working surface and make a fountain. Make sure that the “walls” of your fountain are thick and even. Pour the liquid in the middle of the fountain. With your fingertips, mix the liquid and the flour starting from the middle of the fountain, slowly working towards the edges. When the ingredients have been incorporated start kneading the dough with the heel of your hands until it becomes smooth and easy to work with, around 5 to 7 minutes. You might need to add more flour if the dough is sticky.

BUTTER BLOCK
1. Combine butter and flour in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and beat on medium speed for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the paddle and then beat for 1 minute more, or until smooth and lump free. Set aside at room temperature.
2. After the detrempe has chilled 30 minutes, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll the dough into a rectangle approximately 18 x 13 inches and ¼ inch thick. The dough may be sticky, so keep dusting it lightly with flour. Spread the butter evenly over the center and right thirds of the dough. Fold the left edge of the detrempe to the right, covering half of the butter. Fold the right third of the rectangle over the center third. The first turn has now been completed. Mark the dough by poking it with your finger to keep track of your turns, or use a sticky and keep a tally. Place the dough on a baking sheet, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Place the dough lengthwise on a floured work surface. The open ends should be to your right and left. Roll the dough into another approximately 13 x 18 inch, ¼-inch-thick rectangle. Again, fold the left third of the rectangle over the center third and the right third over the center third. No additional butter will be added as it is already in the dough. The second turn has now been completed. Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
4. Roll out, turn, and refrigerate the dough two more times, for a total of four single turns. Make sure you are keeping track of your turns. Refrigerate the dough after the final turn for at least 5 hours or overnight. The Danish dough is now ready to be used. If you will not be using the dough within 24 hours, freeze it. To do this, roll the dough out to about 1 inch in thickness, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and freeze. Defrost the dough slowly in the refrigerator for easiest handling. Danish dough will keep in the freezer for up to 1 month.

APPLE FILLING
Makes enough for two braids

Ingredients
4 Fuji or other apples, peeled, cored, and cut into ¼-inch pieces
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
4 tablespoons unsalted butter

Toss all ingredients except butter in a large bowl. Melt the butter in a sauté pan over medium heat until slightly nutty in color, about 6 - 8 minutes. Then add the apple mixture and sauté until apples are softened and caramelized, 10 to 15 minutes. If you’ve chosen Fujis, the apples will be caramelized, but have still retained their shape. Pour the cooked apples onto a baking sheet to cool completely before forming the braid. (If making ahead, cool to room temperature, seal, and refrigerate.) They will cool faster when spread in a thin layer over the surface of the sheet. After they have cooled, the filling can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Left over filling can be used as an ice cream topping, for muffins, cheesecake, or other pastries.

DANISH BRAID
Makes enough for 2 large braids

Ingredients
1 recipe Danish Dough (see below)
2 cups apple filling, jam, or preserves (see below)

For the egg wash: 1 large egg, plus 1 large egg yolk

1. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper. On a lightly floured surface, roll the Danish Dough into a 15 x 20-inch rectangle, ¼ inch thick. If the dough seems elastic and shrinks back when rolled, let it rest for a few minutes, then roll again. Place the dough on the baking sheet.
2. Along one long side of the pastry make parallel, 5-inch-long cuts with a knife or rolling pastry wheel, each about 1 inch apart. Repeat on the opposite side, making sure to line up the cuts with those you’ve already made.
3. Spoon the filling you’ve chosen to fill your braid down the center of the rectangle. Starting with the top and bottom “flaps”, fold the top flap down over the filling to cover. Next, fold the bottom “flap” up to cover filling. This helps keep the braid neat and helps to hold in the filling. Now begin folding the cut side strips of dough over the filling, alternating first left, then right, left, right, until finished. Trim any excess dough and tuck in the ends.

Egg Wash
Whisk together the whole egg and yolk in a bowl and with a pastry brush, lightly coat the braid.

Proofing and Baking
1. Spray cooking oil (Pam…) onto a piece of plastic wrap, and place over the braid. Proof at room temperature or, if possible, in a controlled 90 degree F environment for about 2 hours, or until doubled in volume and light to the touch.
2. Near the end of proofing, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Position a rack in the center of the oven.
3. Bake for 10 minutes, then rotate the pan so that the side of the braid previously in the back of the oven is now in the front. Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees F, and bake about 15-20 minutes more, or until golden brown. Cool and serve the braid either still warm from the oven or at room temperature. The cooled braid can be wrapped airtight and stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, or freeze for 1 month.

Happy Braiding!

Friday was Michael’s 21st birthday and naturally I decided to make him a cake to celebrate. Woo! AS you can see from the photo I iced it in grey buttercream (oh, and that thing is meant to be a heart although it turned out a bit blobby). I know what you’re thinking, a grey cake? Who would want that? But wait! There’s more to this cake than meets the eye. You may think it’s just a boring, drab, grey cake but really, it’s not.

Behold! The colouful psychedelic inside of the cake! Marvel at the bright colours and how awesome it looks!

Isn’t it great? You know you want one. Anyway, this was actually super easy to do although it was a bit time consuming having to split the batter into seven separate bowls and colouring each lot individually, then spreading them one of top of the other in the cake tins. It was well worth it though.

Here’s a picture of a slice:

Do you know what time it is? It’s time to ROCK OUT! With this cake that I made for my brother’s 13th birthday on Saturday. It took me six hours and I am so proud of it although I was sick of looking at it by the time it was finished.

It’s made up of three cakes (two rectangle ones and a round one which was cut to be the neck of the guitar) and I made the marshmallow fondant myself. I know that the red isn’t as red as it should be and the black isn’t quite as black but I’m not that fussed because it was my first time messing around with fondant and I’d already used half a bottle of red food colouring. And my wrists and arms were killing me from all the kneading that was involved. In fact, I think making the fondant was the most time consuming part of the process. Anyway, it even has a whammy bar (Is that what it’s called?) which Dad made out of a metal chopstick (he bent it and cut it down to size) and then I stuck a lump of icing on the end of it. Yay!

What an awesome cake. It even got some comments from the other thirteen year old boys that were in the house such as: ‘WOW!’ and ‘That’s the best cake I’ve ever seen!’. Which was nice but, you know, he was thirteen so how many cakes can he have seen in his short life? Anyway, I like the cake so much and I am so proud of it that you’re going to be subjected to several more pictures of it.

Ok. I’ll stop now.

One of the many problems that come with being a poor university student is that it can be incredibly hard to find cheap things for lunch that aren’t instant noodles (and believe me, I’ve had enough instant noodles recently to last me a lifetime), so I decided to bake some savoury muffins that we could eat for lunch over the coming week. I got my cookbooks out and searched for a suitable muffin recipe but, to my surprise, there wasn’t one. Yeah. After dithering for a while, I pulled myself together and adapted a recipe for cheese, bacon and creamed corn muffins that I found in the Edmonds Food for Flatters cookbook.

Cheese and Onion Muffins

Ingredients:

2 cups of plain flour

5 tsps of baking powder

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups of milk

salt and pepper to taste

200g of grated cheese

1 large onion (chopped)

Method

1. Grease muffin tins.

2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour and the baking powder.

3. Make a well in the centre, and add the eggs, milk, salt and pepper.

4. Mix until just combined.

5. Stir in cheese and onion.

6. Fill the muffin tins about 3/4 full.

7. Bake at 190c for about 20 minutes.

Variation: Ham and Cheese

Use 200g of chopped ham instead of the onion.

These are actually really good and stuffed full of….stuff.

Today I made Crunchie Cupcakes! They were super easy since it was just smashed up Crunchie bars added to a plain vanilla mixture. While I was making these I ate so many Crunchie pieces and I realised that it had been absolutely AGES since I had eaten one and I’d forgotten how much I liked them.

Anyway, the cupcakes themselves were a little disappointing because the honeycomb had completely melted into the cake when I was expecting there to be pieces, but apart from that they were alright.

Crunchie Cupcakes:

Ingredients:

225g of unsalted butter, softened

225g of caster sugar

225g of self-raising flour

1 tsp of baking powder

4 eggs

1 tsp of vanilla essence

2 King Sized Crunchie bars smashed into little pieces

1. Preheat the oven to 175C (350F) and line tins with baking cases.

2. Sift the flour and the baking powder together in a large bowl.

3. Add the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla and beat until just combined.

4. Stir in Crunchie pieces.

5. Fill the cases about halfway and bake for 20 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before decorating.

Makes 18

Chocolate Buttercream

Ingredients:

375g of icing sugar, sieved

225g unsalted butter, softened

100g Cocoa, sieved

Pinch of salt

1. Sieve together the icing sugar and cocoa in a bowl

2. Add the butter and beat together until smooth.

Pipe (or spread) onto cakes and top each one with a piece of Crunchie bar.

The Vanilla Cupcake recipe I used is from 500 Cupcakes by Fergal Connolly.

I apologise for the lack of cupcake pictures but my food photography skills are pretty much non existent and every single picture I took of them was blurry and badly lit. So instead you get a picture of some chilli powder on a plate that I found in Google Image Search. Anyway, these cakes turned out pretty well considering I had to come up with a substitute for some of the ingredients. The chocolate cakes were moist with the chilli powder adding a weird sort of warmth to them. The chilli powder definitely added something to the cakes and it wasn’t overpowering, although my brother thought it was but he’s 12 and pretty useless when it comes to eating anything with any sort of spice in it. These really aren’t bad.

The original recipe came from here: Mayan Chocolate Cupcakes from Flickr user sugar-bliss gnome. But since I had to modify it slightly I’ll write it up here too with the changes made to it.

Chocolate Chilli Cupcakes

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons of instant coffee granules

1/2 cup of hot water

100g Dark Chocolate (I used Cadbury Old Gold which is 70% Cocoa Solids)

100g Milk Chocolate

8 tablespoons of butter

2 teaspoons of cinnamon powder

3 teaspoons of chilli powder

3 tablespoons of cocoa powder

2 cups of plain flour

1 teaspoon of baking soda

2 cups of sugar

2 eggs

1/2 a cup of heavy cream (I discovered I had no cream so I used this as a substitute)

1/2 teaspoon of white vinegar

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1/2 cup of canola or vegetable oil

1/2 cup of water

Method:

1. Brew the coffee granules in the hot water and leave to cool.

2. Melt the Dark and Milk Chocolate in a double boiler with the butter, one teaspoon of chilli powder and one teaspoon of cinnamon powder until just melted and combined.

3. Once melted add the cocoa powder and stir until smooth. Let cool.

4. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, the baking soda and the remaining chilli and cinnamon powder.

5. In another bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, cream, vinegar, vanilla, oil, and water.

6. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and stir in the chocolate mixture and the cooled coffee.

7. Fill the liners about 2/3 full and bake at 180C (350F) for about 20 minutes.

The batter does tend to stick to the paper liners like sugar-bliss gnome says but it’s not too bad. since I was out of cream I couldn’t do the whipped cream topping so I made a dark chocolate ganache and sprinkled dark and milk chocolate shavings on the top. This topping was alright but I think the cream would be better. I’ll definitely make sure I have cream on hand next time I make these.

During the mid semester break (last week) I went back home to mummy and daddy’s to sponge off them for a bit and, while bored, I turned to baking to keep me entertained.

The first thing I made was a batch of White Chocolate Mudcake Cupcakes with White Chocolate Ganache and Milk Chocolate Curls for decoration but, although the mudcake was delicious and had the proper mudcake texture, they sank in the middle while they were baking. I think it’s because my brother opened the oven even after I told him not to.

Anyway, this post isn’t about the mudcake cupcakes that were full of fail, but more about the Chocolate Chip Cookies I tried next…..that were a partial failure. That’s right, a partial failure. Everyone seemed to enjoy them (everyone being my boyfriend or someone in my immediate family so they might be biased and/or lying) but I swear I did something wrong.

For starters the recipe said to ‘drop the dough onto a greased baking sheet’. Have you got that? Drop it. from a tablespoon. My dough was so crumbly that if I’d done that it would have just flown everywhere. And second, the recipe said it makes 32 but I only got about 12 before I gave up and ate the rest out of the bowl with a spoon. Mmm. Delicious. I did look at how much was left before I began my spoon assisted assault on it and I think I could have only got about 4 more out of it. Max. So what’s that? 16? That’s nowhere near 32! In fact, that’s half of 32. I must have stuffed up somewhere. Anyway, I got the recipe from here: Thin, Crisp, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies but for those of you who are too lazy to click on a link, I’ll write it up for you too. Aren’t I nice?

Thin, Crisp, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of butter, melted and cooled to room temperature

1/2 cup of firmly packed brown sugar

1/3 cup of granulated sugar

3 tablespoons of water

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence ( If you really like vanilla, like me, just add more)

1 cup of all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon of baking soda

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of chocolate chips

1/2 cup of chopped pecans (optional) (I left these out)

Method:

1. In a bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, beat butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until well blended. Beat in the water and the vanilla until smooth.

2. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt.

3. Stir into butter mixture until well incorporated and add chocolate chips (and pecans). (I decided to make these quite late at night and we didn’t have any chocolate chips so I smashed a block of Cadbury Dairy Milk up with a rolling pin and used that instead. It was a good decision.)

4. Drop dough in one tablespoon portions, two inches apart onto greased baking sheets.

5. Bake in a 150C (300F) oven for about 14 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are browned but the centre is still pale.

6. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

All in all these cookies were rather good…even though the dough refused to give me all the cookies I deserved. The cookies were crispy around the edges but wonderfully and deliciously soft and chewy in the middle. I think I’ll be trying them again some day. Who knows, maybe I’ll get my 32 cookies next time?

Well after lurking around other cupcake and baking related blogs for weeks I have finally caved and decided to start my own. I’m a little bit nervous because I’m not sure if what I do really measures up against some of the stuff I’ve been seeing on other blogs but I’m prepared to give it a go and see what happens. Also, I really wanted to join the Daring Bakers challenges but I felt weird doing it without having a blog to post the results in.

Anyway, a little about me is needed I guess. My name is Stephanie and I’m studying French and Japanese at university. Woot! Woot! I really got into baking stuff about a year ago but I’ve only recently (like in the past few months) realised that there’s all these wonderful food blogs out there and I’ve become addicted to reading them. I check some of them everyday. My parents seem a little worried that their 20 year old daughter would rather stay in and bake delicious treats than go out drinking and sleeping with strangers like other young people. All I can say is at least I’m unlikely to catch anything from making cakes and biscuits. What else? Um…one day I would really like to have my own bakery but I don’t think that’s going to happen for a few years.